the life of a health nut

I eat pretty healthy and workout, I drink my gallon of water, don’t party too hard and always make my best efforts to be mentally, emotionally and physically well but not until this week did I realize the effect my life choices have on others who come into contact with me. Getting both of these messages made me smile from ear to ear and showed me how powerful I truly can be in motivating and inspiring people to take control of their health!

Last week I had a great week of workouts, so I wanted to document them to show off to the internet world!

Monday – Rest

Tuesday – BodyPump + CXWORX

Wednesday – Rest

Thursday – BodyPump + CXWORX

Friday – Cycle

Saturday – Stairmaster (20 min) + free full body weights

Sunday – Cycle + Run 1 mile

For a grand total of FIVE HOURS! I have really been struggling for the past 4-6 weeks to hit anything over 3 hours/week in the gym when I have consistently been used to getting about 5-6 in for years so to be working my way back up there feels really great!

This week here is my plan:

Monday (today) – Rest

Tuesday – BodyPump + CXWORX

Wednesday – Cardio (probably 2 mile run & stairs)

Thursday – BodyPump + CXWORX

Friday – Cycle

Saturday – Run all over the city for a scavenger dash. I will be sure to update all of you about this after it happens. I participated last year and it was an absolute blast!

Sunday – Free weights + cardio

There it is, if all goes well I will hit more than 5 hours this week too! Ahhhh the things that get me excited. Another thing that gets me excited is new workout gear – check out this super cute top I bought from lulu (don’t mind the messy hair or bedroom).

While I always look forward to the gym, some days the choices fellow gym-goers make can really irritate me, almost to the point where I should be investing in yoga classes after my group fitness class just to bring my stress level back down to normal. I think the thing that bothers me the most is that some people just haven’t learned proper gym etiquette, which is fine – but when you are the only one slamming down your weights in between sets, it’s time to reevaluate what you are doing at the gym, buddy!

Here is a list of my biggest gym pet peeves from the last 10 years of being a gym rat:

Waiting for a workout class by standing outside of the group fitness room 5-20 minutes before the class starts. This, I just do not understand – if you are at the gym, shouldn’t you be doing something active while you are there?

As I eluded to above, throwing weights all over making very loud annoying noises. I know you are trying to lift heavy, and that is excellent, but you need to be controlling your movements – this is a gym now olympic weightlifting.

Space invaders. Group fitness classes can get pretty crowded but feeling sweat fly off of you is not really how I wanted to spend my dinner hour, so please look at your surroundings and be adaptable.

Grunting, oh the grunting! I don’t understand it. Again, I know you are lifting really heavy things, but this isn’t your own private gym – there are people around who don’t need to be bothered by your sexual sounds.

Those are some of my biggest gym pet peeves, others include: not putting weights/equipment back where it belongs, horrible instructors and bad facility lighting.

I can’t get enough of these flavored creamers but in an effort to figure out why I’m not losing weight I dumped the brand new bottle of my very favorite flavor down the kitchen sink this morning. I will be flavoring my coffee with plain soy milk. Hopefully it’s tasty!

I posted this video on Facebook page earlier today to see how it made people feel. I have mixed reactions to the clip, it was rude for a server to talk about the women behind their backs. On the other hand, they are fat and they ordered sodas and meals with unhealthy fries. I don’t understand why “fat” is such a bad work, would one rather be called obese or chunky or heavy? If you are fat, you are just that. There is no way to sugar coat it, if you don’t like it please seek help to change it.

EMU, UW and Bastyr are all schools and the last 2 weeks all my free time has been consumed by these three universities. Now, why in the world would I be talking about schools when it took me 6 years to get my BS because I strongly disliked school so much!? Why would I be talking about school when everyone who knows me has at least once heard me say I would never go back to school for my master’s.

…I guess you could say, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve decided to do what I should have done years ago: become a registered dietician.

In high school that is what I wanted so I went to community college with a vague idea of how to accomplish that goal, I focused my schooling on getting my AA degree and eventually transferring to a university. I had no clue which school I wanted to go to but then the boyfriend suggested that I go to CWU, and I looked into their Nutrition program and was happy to see they had an excellent one! I signed up for my science and nutrition classes and was excited to be taking the next step. A couple days into the quarter I decided that I really wanted to work with the community educating them about health and also discovered that science classes were really hard. I dropped all my nutrition classes and met with an adviser in the Public Health (Community Health Education track) program to get into the health classes. For the next two years I loved learning all I could about different health topics, developing programs, social marketing, drugs, and epidemiology. I graduated, got an awesome internship at my number one place, then was offered a job doing what I love. I am so incredibly lucky and grateful to have a job using my education, I know so many people who are not as fortunate.

I enjoy what I do but what it comes down to is that I’m not doing what I LOVE. I want to work with people on a one on one basis in a counseling setting, talking about their goals and creating meal plans for them. I have a strong calling to work with overweight/obese children and those suffering with eating disorders, and that’s why I’m going back to school!

The decision happened pretty quickly. I did about 5 hour of research on what schooling it takes to be an RD, job growth, potential jobs/careers and starting salaries. I can’t be more excited to finally be going to school to be a dietician after dreaming about it 10 years ago!

My research has taught me this:

– all schools require some prerequisite classes

-dietetic internships (DI) are impossible to receive (a 50% placement rate) and required to have before taking the RD exam

-there are coordinated programs where you complete your DI and course work at the same time

-there is only one school in WA with the coordinated program and one school in the country that offers their program online

-of the three schools I am looking into, all have acceptance rates of about 35% of all applicants

A lot of this information has added stress to my life these last two weeks.

More school loans!

Not beginning my career until after I’m 30!

Pushing back having a child! Pushing back buying a house!

Not being able to move if Dan finds an out of state job!

A high possibility of having to relocate for my DI!

Taking classes while working full time!

But in the end, I know this is the best decision I can make, with all of those things working against me, I know that I will love being an RD and going to work doing something that means so much to me.

My plan:

This journey will not be short (which honestly bums me out) and it will be difficult. I plan to take 2 classes/quarter at community college while still working full time at my current job. I need to maintain a 3.25 GPA in all of these pre-req classes for many of the schools. I will study for and take the GRE this summer. I will apply to schools in January 2014 and continue to finish up my pre-req classes. If accepted, I will start one of the programs September 2014! This will either be a 2 year coordinated program (fingers crossed!) or a 2 year program with an additional 6-24 month internship after completing the coursework. Once my DI is completed I will take the RD exam and start looking for a job in the field.

I am actually excited to start taking some classes next month, I will be taking a basic math class, basic chemistry and psychology.